House Arrest Read Online Free PDF Page B

about everything. He complained about the food he could not eat, about his pointless jobs and dead-end love affairs, the synthetic fabric in his clothing, the lines in which he had to wait to buy rum, the furniture he wanted to order from catalogs, the things he couldn’t afford, the heart medicine he needed for his mother, the CD player he wanted for himself.
    We took a long sweaty walk along the seawall, where hordes of children banged against my thighs, begging for pencils and Chiclets. These I carried in abundance, and so as in the Pied Piper the children followed us for blocks until Manuel shooed them away.
    When we stopped in a small tourist restaurant for lemonade, the waiter asked Manuel what he was doing inside arestaurant and asked to see his papers, but I convinced the waiter that Manuel was my guide. The waiter did not see Manuel take my hand and press it to his lips. Nor did he see me pull away as I told Manuel that I was married and my husband and daughter were waiting for me at home. Manuel shrugged with a laugh. “So what does that matter?” he asked. “Here we live in the present tense.”
    “You have no one …?” I asked.
    “My wife and son left ten years ago. I was supposed to join them, but it just didn’t happen.”
    “I’m sorry …”
    “It’s the boy I miss. I’m surprised at how much I do. He’s thirteen now and I wouldn’t recognize him in the street.” Then he sipped his lemonade in silence until the straw slurped at the bottom of the glass.
    When we returned to my hotel, Isabel was sitting at a small table with a group of sorrowful women who emitted the odor of funeral flowers. They were dressed in spandex bodysuits; their jewelry clanged and their eyebrows were painted on. They were laughing as if someone had just told a very good joke. Isabel wore a pink cotton shift that made her look like a waif, as if she could just float away. She was laughing with them, smoking cigarettes. Of course, she must have known that they were whores. Certainly they knew who she was. When she saw us, she stood up. “Manuel, what a surprise! What are you doing here?” She kissed him on both cheeks.
    She motioned for me to sit beside her, and someone pulled up a chair. When I sat down, she touched my hand, and I was startled by the coldness of her touch. “So,” she said, “tell me: What have you seen? Manuel, you have been giving her thetour?” Then she tossed her head back and laughed as if this was a wonderful joke. Her bony hand pressed on mine, sending a shiver through me. In her cotton dress, I could see how thin she was. I could easily wrap my fingers around her wrist. A cup of coffee sat in front of her and a cigarette burned in the ashtray. “Museums,” I told her.
    “Oh, yes,” she said, in a voice filled with irony. “We have many museums.” She sighed, looking at me, and I looked back at her. “Museums and cigar factories. And, of course, our plastic-surgery hospitals. Have you seen any of our churches? The Church of the Apparitions—Manuel, you must take her there. Of course,” she said with a wave of her hand, “this is the biggest apparition of all.” She said this in English and the two of us laughed together. Manuel and the whores grinned dumbly, having missed the punch line.
    Her skin was as white as if she’d never been in the sun, and she smelled faintly of cheap, imported perfume. Nina Ricci. At the airport I had only seen her in a crowded room, but now, sitting beside her, I saw something I had not seen before. I suppose that in a country where people are not free to speak, the eyes tell all. Though her frail bones and gaunt features weren’t unusual on an island where there is so little food, the hungry look in her eyes startled me.
    But beyond the raw-bone features, the distracted glance, I looked into the dark hollow of those eyes and saw a sadness I’d never seen before. Once I did some small-town reporting and I saw sad things, believe me. But this woman